Intelligent Design--So it *IS* all about God!

Legislating Science

The Attack on Science by Law and Politics

The old time creationists have evolved. Right now in the Missouri Legislature, HB911 would insert Intelligent Design “Theory” into science textbooks and classrooms across the state. Rather than talking about how such a theory, if it can be called that, violates the First Amendment of the Constitution. Instead let’s talk about how it violates the scientific process and relies on misunderstanding and biased assumptions to “prove” it.

According to the Bill HB911, intelligent design (ID) is the “hypothesis that the complex form and function observed in biological structures are the result of intelligence and, by inference, that the origin of biological life and the diversity of all original species on earth are the result of intelligence.” Now I won’t dwell on the origin of the intelligence in question, for the bill does not cover that, and to be honest the being or beings in question could be anything from God, to ancient, alien robots that tinker with life.

No, the problem with the theory of ID is that it is not testable or provable using scientific methodology. The argument that most supports ID is laid out in the quote above and that in itself are and argument that is called by proponents of ID as Irreducible Complexity. Irreducible Complexity (IC) was first introduced in the book, Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution.

The primary assumption made in intelligent design is the idea that organisms are too complex to come from random chance or natural selection. The inference is that they must have been designed and therefore cannot have evolved. This methodology is upside down of how the scientific method works. The proponents of ID are relying on the lack of understanding that most people have of science to push a theory that has no basis in fact. A scientific theory must face 4 primary tests to be accepted by the scientific community, it must be testable, it must be able to predict, and it must be able to withstand scrutiny by peers of the scientific community, and finally it must be able to be disproved.

The Theory of Evolution has been successfully tested in fact and has withstood the scrutiny of peers. Intelligent design has not. This is not to say that the theory of evolution doesn’t have problems, of course it does. The theory has been refined and rewritten as new discoveries in such things as genetics have occurred. No scientific theory is beyond all doubt, and none are beyond dispute. Darwin had no knowledge of genetics, and therefore did not write about the basic mechanism in which traits are passed down through generations.

The basic fallacy of intelligent design is the use of static examples in proving the theory. Popular objects such as watches or mousetraps are used in comparison to living things. The question to ask is if intelligent design is a valid theory, how do you tell between a designed object such as a watch and a plant? Life is flexible and adaptive, and comparing it to non-living objects is like comparing a ball bearing to an orange.

Representative Cynthia Davis, R-19th District uses a classic example in logical fallacy to support the theory of intelligent design. “If I walk into the kitchen and see some milk on the floor, I do not need to know who spilled the milk to know it did not jump out of my refrigerator and spill itself.” Now how is that related to either the theory of evolution or intelligent design? How she came to compare living organisms to spilled milk is beyond me, for the comparison is not apt to how the theory of evolution works. She displays a basic ignorance on the mechanisms of change that drive the evolutionary process. Most of those mechanisms are not random, nor are they mere chance. Mutation is one mechanism that does drive evolution but most mutations are harmful to the survival of a species and are weeded out by not being reproduced in said species.

The esteemed representative from the 19th district has not used the proper analogy to compare evolution to intelligent design theory, so allow me to use another one. If I walk into the kitchen and open the refrigerator and see that the milk is spoiled, did that happen by design or not? Did some intelligence decide that the milk was in my fridge for too long, or was it simply the bacteria in the milk that were eating it all along? Most people would not think that any being would make such a decision at all, and that it happened by simple biological processes.

I will not make an exhaustive rebuttal to the theory of intelligent design and this article is not that. I simply pointed out some logical fallacies that the proponents of the theory use to confuse the issue. It is not attack on religion that science is about. Rather it is the understanding of the world using deductive reasoning that is the basis of all science. Intelligent design fails to meet up to the standards that are set in science and should not be introduced in public schools as an equal and competing theory. Scientific theories are open to rebuttal and change, and scientists themselves are willing to test theories to and controversial theories, if the competing theories are able to withstand the test of scrutiny by peers in the scientific community. Theories about life should not be made by legislators nor by politicians, but by those people who dedicate their lives to understanding our world and how the world works.